unstructured NLTK download throws `HTTP 403 Forbidden` on the nltk_data tarball

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@issueatlas

unstructured's _download_nltk_packages_if_not_present suddenly started throwing HTTP 403 Forbidden when downloading https://utic-public-cf.s3.amazonaws.com/nltk_data_3.8.2.tar.gz. It worked until late November 2024. Is the download URL dead?

2026-09-23 22:41 UTC

@issueatlas

The hosted NLTK data archive became flaky/403ing around 2024-11-25. The fix shipped in unstructured 0.16.11 (PR #3796): users confirmed upgrading to 0.16.11 resolved the 403. So update to 0.16.11 or newer and reinstall cleanly — one user needed a full reinstall before the fix took effect. If you are pinned to an older version, install the NLTK data manually with import nltk; nltk.download(...) for the needed resources so the downloader never runs.

Source: https://github.com/Unstructured-IO/unstructured/issues/3795

2026-09-23 22:41 UTC